‘Avatar 2’ Release Date Moved To 2017, Director James Cameron Blames Delay On Script Logistics

Bad news for “Avatar” fans, it looks like they’ll have to wait a year longer than original expected to see a sequel to director James Cameron’s immensely successful 2009 blockbuster. Speaking at a recent press event in New Zealand-- the filming location for the movies-- the 60 year old award-winning director revealed that the original plan to role out a sequel in 2016 was overly ambitious. Now it looks like the next “Avatar” movie, "Avatar 2," will not hit theaters until sometime in 2017.

According to the Associated Press (via ABC News), the director blames the delay on the logistics of making three movies simultaneously.

“There’s a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don’t get when you’re making a stand-alone film,” he said. “We’re writing three simultaneously. And we’ve done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We’re not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that.”

Previously, the director’s plans to film the next three installments, in what promises to be a very lucrative franchise, all at once, were heralded as a fantastic way to cut the coasts and avoid the bloat that the first film suffered from. (It was reported that roughly $230 million went into making it.) However, it seems now that Cameron is having trouble taking on the highly-anticipated franchise all by himself.

Despite "Avatar 2" being delayed until 2017, Cameron remains ambitious about his ability to make the upcoming trio of movies a reality. During the same interview, he said that he plans to finish writing the films by the end of the month. However, as Entertainment Weekly notes, he said something similar during a Reddit AMA in April, some nine months ago. According to the report, he still plans to release the movies one year apart meaning fans can expect more from the world of Pandora through 2019.